He was wearing an olive-green silk shirt that day, hanging loosely over the sand-coloured velvet trousers and his curly, steel-grey hair was carefully combed back from his forehead and ears. If there had been something frail and unprotected about him when he absent-mindedly received her in his roof apartment a few months earlier, in worn-out espadrilles and with his ruffled hair standing out at the sides in sleepy wings, that had quite vanished now. His motionless face was like a mask of baked clay. As she walked round shaking hands he sat leaning back at the end of the table caressing the silver lighter lying on his script beside his folded spectacles.
She knew their faces from the stage and the papers. Doubtless they were thinking that she must have lost her way. You didn’t arrive late for Harry Wiener. The actor who was to play her mother, the captain’s wife, sized her with a watchful glance over her reading glasses. For two generations of male theatre-goers the beautiful, generously bosomed diva had been the exemplar of feminine charm and mystery. There was something affected about her masculine reading glasses. Maybe she flirted with the idea that a little touch of ugly clumsiness would only add to her charming face and emphasise the mature dramatic sensuality of her eyes and lips.
The role of the captain was allotted to her male counterpart, the rebellious punk of the acting world, a notorious, rowdy drinker and seducer, with his eternal bedroom eyes, tousled hair and a voice like the morning after. Lucca could not see him without thinking of the line whispered in his ear by a buxom blonde in a television play from her childhood, in a somewhat outrageous bedroom scene for that period, as she rummaged in his unruly chest hair. Big bad boy! He smiled his very best professional bedroom smile as he pressed her hand until she was afraid it would be left in his horny paw. The big bad boy had turned grey and he too had acquired reading glasses, on a cord to prevent them getting lost. A small pot-belly had begun to show itself behind the tight-fitting denim shirt and he seemed to be constantly suppressing a belch.
She pulled out a chair and sat down beside the captain. He passed her a pencil. Watch out, it’s sharp! he whispered with a sly foxy glance, as if he was a schoolboy and she was the new girl. Right, let’s get going, said Harry Weiner, but he didn’t put on his glasses nor did he open his script. He sat leaning back with crossed legs while they turned to the first page. He stayed like that throughout the reading, his head bent slightly forwards, eyes half closed and fixed on a point on the floor, listening to the actors reading their parts. If one of them started to stress a sentence, already trying to make their mark on how the role should be played, only then did he raise his head slightly and smile a little, inscrutable smile. That made the reader subdue his tone again and content himself with reading the words. When they had gone through the text and closed their scripts there was a moment’s silence. Then he stood up, looked round and thanked them. They remained seated while he gathered his things and left. Again Lucca had the feeling of being in a classroom. As soon as Harry Wiener was out of the door conversation broke out all across the table.
That’s how he was! The captain stretched out his arms backwards and smiled in amusement at the bewildered look on her face. He rested his hands on his knees with his elbows pointing outwards. Lucca shrugged her shoulders. She had expected him to say something to them about the play and the roles. He never did that… the cavalry captain held his breath a moment before breathing out through his nose. But just you wait! He might well seem a bit cold to begin with, and he was never much of a chatterbox, you could get quite frightened of him, but he was a lovely person. Probably the reason for his reserve today was because of his wife. It was bloody awful, she wasn’t likely to see the new year. But he was taking it bravely… really there was something gentle… yes, gentle about him. You wouldn’t believe it, said the captain, but he makes you feel safe, even if he gives quite the opposite impression. That’s the secret, he smiled. Lucca nodded agreement, as if she was quite familiar with the situation. Harry Wiener put you at ease, but you didn’t get to be friends. He knew how to keep himself to himself! The captain held up his hands. The diva leaned forward, her breasts in the informal sweatshirt pressed flat on the table. She put her head on one side and smiled lasciviously. Well, darling, so what was it like in Borneo? The captain turned towards her. Brilliant!
Sitting slightly apart Lucca wondered why it was that actors always talked to each other so affectedly. It was darling or sweetheart the whole time, and she secretly questioned if they were all gay. Even the women sounded gay because they seemed to mimic gay men’s parody of women. She promised herself never to start talking like that. On her way down the corridor the diva caught up with her on high, clicking heels. The high-heeled shoes seemed like a feminine comment on the blue jeans, relaxed sweatshirt and ugly, mannish spectacles. It went very well, she said with a motherly smile, as if Lucca had been up for an exam. But do take care with your consonants! People don’t learn to articulate properly any more… She held open the street door for her young colleague and put her head on one side again. Nice to have met you!
The captain had been right. Harry Wiener never exchanged jovialities with the actors that other directors might at the start of the day’s rehearsals, to warm them up and maybe redress the ghastly old-fashioned authority they still represented. But although he did nothing to ingratiate himself with them or put them at ease, after a week Lucca discovered she felt perfectly safe with this undemonstrative, discreetly attentive man. She lost her fear of appearing foolish. Every bid, every suggestion was permitted, and if they could not be used, they dropped out by themselves, she didn’t know how, for he never directly criticised her way of playing the part, a raised eyebrow was enough. Nor did he praise her, simply smiled now and then with unexpected mildness, almost gratefully, as she felt warmth spreading through her.
He preferred to express himself in simple and very physical images, always based on the current passage. Before and after rehearsing a scene he spoke to the actors separately. He seldom interrupted them when they were acting and if he did, it was with a specific question or a single word that might seem irrelevant or puzzling to the others, like a private code meant only for the one he was addressing, which helped the actor get back on the track. On the track of what? To begin with they didn’t know. They thought they were approaching the unknown core of their character, but little by little they each discovered they were merely following the outlines of something they had known all the time without thinking about it, since it involved hidden aspects of themselves.
Lucca gradually came to respect the diva and the captain. She saw their concentration at work, and they saw her when she felt most vulnerable and naked. She had still not worked long enough to feel it on her own body, but she imagined their affected manner must be a shield. They were obliged to act in their own lives in order for them to be themselves on the stage. In the real world they had to allow themselves to play ironically and without commitment, employing the most grotesque and comical attitudes, because the stage was the only place where they could not allow themselves the least simulation or absent-minded, fashionable convention.